The LEGO War of the Worlds
by HAL-9001
Summary: Life on Mars / Mars Mission. This fic is inspired by the LoM/MM mission logs but tends more towards the AU side of canonicity, correcting the myriad of scientific issues in the original and updating the story for a more mature audience. Kplus/T?
1. The Eve of the War

**Prologue: The Eve of the War**

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

H. G. Wells wrote those words in the opening to his famous book, The War of the Worlds. While suggestions of alien invasion are often met with skepticism if not derision, and while Mars has, for decades, been held as lifeless and barren for some millennia, Wells had no idea how right he would turn out to be.

It all started with the Ares mission. The National Science Board had always wanted a program to explore Mars with men, even during the days of the Apollo program – back when it was still NASA. Now, on June 26, 2070, that dream was finally being realized.

I was one member of the first human crew to set foot upon the Red Planet, following the wheel tracks of dozens of probes before us. Little did we know that we were not the only living beings to tread upon that rusty sand...


	2. Ground Control to Major Tom

**Chapter One: Ground Control to Major Tom**

"Control, Commander; all gauges show within normal operating range."

"_Commander, this is Control; we show same. All systems are go for launch; initiating final countdown procedures._"

_T-minus five minutes._

Commander Mac Roberts turned to me. "So, BB, you feeling up to this?"

I nodded eagerly. "You bet, Commander. I've been waiting for this day!" I meant it, too. As soon as I heard that I was a lucky astronaut picked for the Ares-1 exploration team, I had counted down the months till launch.

He chuckled. "Yeah, I was the same way on my first mission." He turned to our third crew member, Doctor Albert Edwards, and grinned. "You built this bird right, didn't you, Doc?"

He grimaced at the nickname. "I didn't build the _Solar Explorer_; I just designed it. And yes, I designed it well."

Ivan Aleksandrov, a representative from the Russian Federal Space Agency, was our fourth crew member. US/Russia relations had been slightly strained over the trade agreement we had just signed with the European Union, and so the NSB decided to give the RKA a seat in hopes that this might smooth relations over, similar to the Apollo/Soyuz missions from the First Cold War. Fortunately, the RKA's General Director made a good choice when he fingered Ivan to take the role: Ivan was valedictorian at the Moscow Institute for the Applied Sciences – in layman's terms, he was a top-notch engineer – and he had achieved some measure of fame for his leadership and heroism during the disaster aboard the Russian space station Открытие, or "Discovery." No, before you ask, he _doesn't_ pronounce his v's like w's – only Ensign Pavel Chekov of the USS _Enterprise_ does that.

_T-minus three minutes._

Ivan turned to me. "So, Brian, you are not concerned about the launch?"

"Who, me? I'm vibrating like a tuning fork over here, or I would if the seatbelts let me."

_T-minus two minutes. Decoupling fuel lines._

"Get ready for the longest two minutes of your lives, everyone..."

"At least, I hope I designed everything correctly...and that they built it correctly..."

"Doc, now is _not_ the time."

_T-minus one minute. Decoupling de-icing systems._

_T-minus thirty seconds. Pad cooling system standing by._

"I need to use the bathroom."

"I think my stomach's gone back to Russia."

_T-minus ten seconds._

_Nine._

_Eight. Gas igniters active._

_Six._

_Five. Ignition. Throttle up._

_Three._

_Two._

_One._

_T-minus zero seconds, launching. Good luck, Ares-One._

We were going to need it...

...

It's a six-month trip to Mars. I'm not going to say that it was boring, but it's not really relevant to what actually happened once we got to the surface. Ask the bigwigs at the NSB about what happened en route – I'm not telling it here. All you need to know is that we ran into turbulence in the atmosphere and aerobraked at the wrong angle, which resulted in a much rougher landing than the _Solar Explorer_ was supposed to handle. We weren't supposed to be on Mars for long, but now we would be making a more permanent base.

It was January 12, 2071, a few weeks after landing. Ivan and I had been constructing a shelter in a nearby crater using parts scavenged from the wreckage, while Doc took the few remaining pressurized chambers and tried to work them into something resembling a living space. We now housed ourselves in a small building on the lip of a crater, from which we did our scientific work. The NSB and the RKA were scratching their heads over how to get us back – Lockheed Martin was building a beefed-up _Solar Explorer_ to rescue us, although nobody had authorized such a mission. Even if such a venture were authorized, it would still take at least six months to reach us, and because we were about nine months away from the next launch window, it would be at least a year before we could hope for a rescue.

Anyway, I was out by a ridge – we called it the "Them Thar Hills" – scooping up some soil for processing, when I saw something move. Now, I hadn't told the others, but I'd been seeing movement on that ridge for some time, but nothing that couldn't be explained by wind or something like that. This time, my curiosity got the better of me, and I climbed up to the top. This was a little dangerous; the ground was uneven and had little traction, but I'd practiced a lot back on Earth and then some more on Mars. Then, I saw footprints; they were wide and shaped like X's, so whatever made them had largish feet, no doubt for walking on Martian sand. I followed them up, and saw that they abruptly stopped at the top of the ridge. I leaned over to see what was on the other side, and I must have overbalanced, because, the next thing I know, I'm tumbling helmet-over-boots down the other side of the ridge. I yelled to the others over the radio, and Mac promised that Doc was coming in the T-3 Trike, our rover that the landing fortunately hadn't damaged.

I came sliding to a stop at the bottom of the ridge, I looked up, and what do I see but what could only be a Martian! A live Martian! It looked just as surprised to see me as I was to see it. I stood slowly and backed away so as to show that I wasn't a threat. It must have thought the same thing; it pulled itself slowly to its feet. Now I could get a better look at this creature.

It wasn't very tall, but it was somewhat spindly, and it had an exoskeleton like a Terran insect. Its build was somewhat like ours – a torso, connected to two arms, two legs, and a head. Its joints were similarly arranged. But it had four toes on each foot, arranged in an X-pattern, with one sort of claw farther up on the back of its legs, and four fingers and a thumb on each hand. Its head was broad and flat, with two large eyes on top and a pair of antennae above them. It didn't have a mouth like a human's – more like that on an ant. Perhaps they communicated via pheromones or by noises? I shakily triggered my radio. "Doc, you there?"

The answer was partially obscured by motor noise. "Yes, BB, hang in there."

"Don't come driving in too fast, alright?"

"I don't understand."

"Just stop at the top of Them Thar Hills and you'll see."

After an hour, I saw the dome of the T-3 appear over the crest of the ridge. "BB, what in the world is that thing in front of you?!"

"This, Doc, is a Martian! I haven't spoken with it yet, though – I figured that might be your department."

"I...I...oh. Right." The T-3 trundled to the bottom of the ridge, by me. Doc hopped out and regarded the Martian before him. He must have looked a little too closely, because, all of a sudden, a massive blue bipedal machine strode from over a nearby hill, with a nasty-looking weapon aimed at us!

...

A/N: How's that for a start? Just wondering; to any Russian-speakers out there, most of the meanings for "discovery" that I saw related to either legal "discovery" in a court case or "discovery" as in detection or espionage, and I didn't want either of those – I want discovery in the Star Trek "boldly going where no man has gone before" sense. Did I get it right, or is there a better word that I can use?


	3. First Contact

**Chapter 2: First Contact**

The Martian snapped its head around, and placed itself between us and the robot. Now we got a good look at its back: a pair of wing covers. One seemed to be moving slightly – perhaps they communicated like crickets, at least to some extent. It waved its arms at the robot, and the machine lowered its weapon. "Thanks," I breathed, although it certainly couldn't understand me.

The head of the robot opened, and another Martian stepped out. This one was larger than the one I'd met, and had a ridge on its chest. We later learned that the Martian I had met was a female, and that chest ridges signified a male. Doc stepped forward to meet him. "You know what you're doing, Doc?"

"Bryan, in all the time we've spent together, when have I _not_ known what I'm doing?"

He later told me how he communicated with the male Martian: with mathematics. After all, as he put it, "one and one always make two, no matter what planet you're from!" Fortunately, they also used a base-ten numbering system, and before long, we could add, subtract, divide, and multiply in Martian, and they could do the same with Terran notation. We eventually had to leave, but we knew we'd be back tomorrow.

On the trip back to our home, I pondered what I'd seen. These Martians were clearly technologically advanced, and we had a whole year to get to know them. Could they help us get back home?

"Say, Doc?" He turned to me. "What do we tell Mission Control?" He opened his mouth and it hung that way.

"You know, Bryan, I haven't a clue. We'll talk it over with Ivan and Mac when we get back home."

Mac was all for telling the mission controllers about what we'd seen. He went over the video logs from Doc's little math lesson with the Martian, and concluded that we needed more advice – math was extremely useful, and good for easing up those difficult first contact sessions, but it's hard to ask for help with math, and Doc agreed with him. Ivan and I, on the other hand, were against revealing the Martians' presence – what if the media heard about it? People have a hard enough time getting along because of their race, religion, nationality, you name it – how in the world would people react to extraterrestrial life? I guaranteed that at least one politician would start blaming Terran troubles on them, and that would be the end of Terra-Mars relations.

…

"Antares!" I snapped. The inventor ignored me. "Antares, listen to me!" He glared over from his Red Planet Protector. "What were you thinking, pointing that giant laser at them?! What if they got the wrong idea about us? Why in the world would you pull that kind of stunt?!"

A figure walked up behind me. I turned to see my father, Rigel, our leader. "Antares did as he did," he said, "because I wanted him to keep you safe." He embraced me tightly. "Cassiopeia, I was worried about you – first you fell down the ridge, and then one of those creatures from the Terran machine fell down after you, I thought he might hurt you!"

I laughed. "Honestly, I think he was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. And besides," I pulled myself to my full height, "I could have taken him. Have you seen how clumsy they are? They really must be from Terra; they've certainly never walked here before."

Father sighed. "They aren't as dexterous as we are, but we know that their planet is much larger than ours. They are almost certainly stronger than we are."

Antares hopped over from his Protector. "At least they met us, and not the Underlanders." That suggestion – that these unprepared explorers could encounter such vicious people – cast an eerie silence over the room. As far as we could tell, there were only four of them, and they could not possibly hope to stand against such a foe. Father came to a decision.

"Antares, Cassiopeia, I want you to establish communications with these beings with all haste. We _must_ warn them about the Underlanders." With that, he left to return to his advisers and colonels.


	4. Warning

**Chapter 3: Warning**

The next day, a young pilot named Altair flew with Antares and me out to that ridge where we had first met these "astronauts," as we later learned they called themselves. This time, all four were present. One that I had never seen before stepped forward and held out his right hand. Antares eventually stepped forward and held it in his. The human – the leader of these "astronauts" – moved his hand up and down, and then released Antares. I later learned that this was a human greeting ritual. Antares then moved to one of the explorers who was present last time, the one who drove the wheeled contraption, and conferred with him – I recognized some more math. Another astronaut, the one who fell down the ridge after me, waved his hand in the air. I assumed this to be another greeting ritual, and waved mine. I then decided to attempt to greet him in our custom: I leaned in close and waved my antennae over the large dome that covered his head. It smelled of plastic; it probably protected them from our planet's environment. We had no idea what their planet was like. We only knew that it was big and dim, with an atmosphere so thick that most of our probes burned up before reaching the ground. A few later ones had survived, but they were always gathered up by humans in dark suits and taken to places where we could not receive signals from them.

Anyway, after a moment, that explorer held his hands up near the top of his dome, and wiggled his fingers in the air over my head. The others looked at him with looks that I later learned signified amusement.

Antares turned to me. "I think we've gone over 'yes' and 'no'. I'm going to try to warn them about the canyons." Altair handed Antares a datapad containing a map of Mars, and the latter called up the map of our current area. He indicated the nearby ridge and its location on the map, to orient the astronauts. He then indicated a canyon – one where the Underlanders were known to live – and vigorously shook his head 'no'. The four explorers conferred amongst themselves, and the leader indicated himself and his friends, and then a spot on the map; presumably where they lived. Antares stared and showed me the point that they had designated. It was less than a mile away from the canyon. These explorers were within easy range of the Underlanders' forces.

…

We all saw the look of horror in the Martians' faces as soon as we showed them where we lived. It was too close to the canyon they didn't want us to enter. The lead Martian immediately showed us another spot on the map, and pointed to us. They wanted us to relocate. Mac shrugged helplessly. What could we do?

…

"Antares, they don't believe us," I sighed. Perhaps I could indicate through pantomime? I crouched and imitated an Underlander, firing imaginary weapons. The leader of the explorers nodded, and then pointed between his dome and the sky, and flapped his hand open and shut, the way they used the openings in their heads when they communicated. Obviously, he wished to contact his off-world superiors.

…

"So what do we tell Mission Control? 'Hey, we met some Martians the other day, and they tell us that some really nasty Martians live nearby so they want us to move!' Like that's going to work!"

Mac sighed. "We'll tell them that we have made contact with Martians, that they appear friendly, and that we think that they have warned us about something hostile in the canyon near our base. We'll contact them as soon as we get situated wherever they want us."

…

FROM: Roberts, Mac

TO: Mitchell, Stanley

RE: A series of unbelievable events

MSG: Yesterday, Bryan accidentally made first contact with a Martian. While exploring the ridge we dubbed the "Them Thar Hills," he fell down the slope on the opposite side of our camp and came face-to-face with a Martian. Dr. Edwards was sent to retrieve Bryan, believing him to be hallucinating from head trauma, but was surprised to see that Bryan had in fact encountered a Martian. The attached video file shows what happened subsequently; to make a long story short, Doc started communicating with a second Martian via mathematics. We have subsequently met with these two Martians and a third, and all seem to agree that our current encampment is too close to a canyon that has something dangerous in it – we think they are telling us that hostile Martians live there. In any case, we will follow them to what they believe is a safer site for us, and contact you upon arrival.

Please, for the Martians' sake, do NOT leak these events to the media. Tell them that we are moving to a more suitable location, but there must be no mention of the Martians until we can speak to one another. We're all walking on thin ice here, and they know it, too.

ATT: firstContact .mp8

…

I was later shown a video of what happened in Mission Control after they received Mac's message. It was pandemonium! Nobody had planned for this eventuality, and everybody had their own idea for how to resolve the issue. The Mission Director eventually swore everyone to secrecy regarding the Martians, and they cooked up a cover story – they said that we were moving to a place with more sunlight, so our solar panels would gather more power.

Anyway, they gave us the go-ahead, and the Martians looked relieved to finally see us packing up to leave.

…

At last, the humans started to move. We had spent the better part of an hour just waiting for their superiors to contact them, and for all we knew, the Underlanders could have been mobilizing to this site!

I guess I should explain the conflict here. Some centuries ago, our population split in two – about half of us placed settlements on top of mountain peaks and plateaus, so as to access sunlight for power, and the other half descended into the canyons to access the crystals and minerals found there. Over the generations, the two populations grew apart, both culturally and physiologically.

Atop the mesas, the spread-out environment favored those who could see and run the farthest; as such, we have very sharp long-range vision and our long legs and larger feet allow us to run long distances and sprint on terrain where others might sink into the dust. Our culture also developed along these lines: we tend to be rather competitive and focus on the future, sometimes at the expense of the present, and our martial arts emphasize mobility and speed, especially with quick kicks to rapidly disable opponents.

On the other hand, the environment in the canyons favored a more balanced body type to facilitate climbing ability. Their vision is strongest in conditions that we might consider too dim. Their hands and feet are built for gripping, and their bodies are stockier than ours. Their culture also reflects their environment: the harsher conditions in the canyons mean that they emphasize cooperation and resilience, and their construction tends to be much sturdier than a typical mesa-dweller's creation.

The one thing tying us together is biodium. In its natural form, as it is found in the canyons, biodium is a green crystal with a faint internal glow. It is pretty, but quite useless. On the other hand, when it is refined, it becomes fuel for our societies. Only we surface-dwellers possess the technology to refine biodium, and so we maintain an arms-length relationship with one another: they mine biodium from their canyons, and we refine it into a power source. It's tense at times, but it's generally worked.

Then we had a falling-out over this arrangement a couple of decades back. Many natural deposits of biodium had been mined out, resulting in prices rising and some talks about rationing refined biodium. All the while, people were grumbling on both sides – some of us argued that the canyon-dwellers were hoarding biodium to artificially increase prices, whereas some of them felt that we were looking for an excuse to restrict refined biodium exports. Things came to a head when some desperate canyon-dwellers mounted an attack on our largest refinery to try and steal the equipment used to refine biodium. They were foiled, but things almost erupted into a war before the discovery of a new vein of biodium, dropping prices and ending the crisis.

Most people put those events behind them, but some weren't willing to let go of the idea that one population should be more important than another, and the inhabitants of the canyon next to which the astronauts had crashed were particularly adamant in this regard. They steadfastly refused any attempts at negotiation, and even their own kind were now unwilling to deal with them because of the lives their actions have taken. This was all the more worrisome to everyone; most of the radical groups on both sides of the Martian surface dissolved after popular support for their supremacist goals evaporated, but the fact that this cell persisted despite their rejection suggested that they had something huge up their sleeves. The last thing that we wanted was for these human emissaries to be caught up in this feud.


End file.
